Collaborative Research: Development of High-Resolution Biomass Burning Records for Tropical South America from Andean Ice Cores

合作研究：从安第斯冰芯开发南美洲热带地区高分辨率生物质燃烧记录

• 批准号: 0921509
• 负责人: Lonnie Thompson
• 金额: $ 17.2万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2013-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921509&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Development; Resolution; Biomass

Records of forest fire occurrence in tropical South America are sparse prior to the advent of satellite monitoring. As a result, basic understanding of the relationships between past fire activity, climate variability, and human societies is limited. Amazonian forest fires can significantly affect the global carbon cycle through redistributing large amounts of organic carbon between the atmosphere, biosphere, and soils. Fires also impact forest health, biomass abundance, and biodiversity. This research project will relate past forest fire activity and its connections to climate variability and human activities by providing the first annually resolved tropical South American paleofire records using molecular organic carbon signatures preserved in high-altitude Andean ice fields. A late Holocene biomass burning record spanning the last 1,000 years, thereby including both the medieval warm period and little ice age, will be generated using the Quelccaya (Peru) ice core, which is well situated to receive organic carbon inputs from the Amazon Basin and Andes and affords remarkable temporal constraints. The investigators will use newly developed analytical techniques to identify and quantify numerous trace-level organic compounds in small volumes of ice, providing high-resolution, multi-molecular records that will describe fire occurrence and the type of material that burned as well as direct emissions from fresh vegetation. The project will provide information about high-altitude carbon cycle dynamics through analysis of vegetation-derived organic carbon in several other ice cores along and straddling the Andean range, which will constrain the depositional fate of aerosols generated during burning. Organic carbon sequestration achieved through incomplete burning will be investigated by characterizing higher plant-derived organic carbon associated with ice core mineral dust and black carbon particles, with its persistence determined through radiocarbon analysis. The variability observed in 20th-century fire records previously developed using this approach is pronounced and quasi-periodic and differs from that of Quelccaya ice core oxygen isotopic and dust records, suggesting that ice core organic geochemical data encodes unique climatic and anthropogenic signals. By extending these records back to roughly 1,000 AD, this project will provide valuable information about tropical South American forest health across major climate shifts and societal developments, providing a basis for determining the role of this important resource and organic carbon pool in future climate change.This project will provide valuable new information and insights regarding biomass burning variability, tropical vegetation fire impacts on the carbon cycle, and the relationships between fire occurrence, climate, and human activity over the last 1,000 years, during which time Amazonian populations expanded and subsequently declined, global climate changed significantly, and industrialization occurred. The biomass burning information generated by this project will help infer changes in the health of Amazonian forests, which are a vital natural and economic resource subject to change from both natural and human-related processes. Amazon Basin vegetation represents a vast sink or source of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Understanding how past changes in Amazon Basin vegetation were connected to global climate variability is important in determining the role of tropical forests in future climate change.

在卫星监测到来之前，热带南美的森林火灾发生记录很少。 结果，对过去火灾活动，气候变异性和人类社会之间关系的基本了解是有限的。 亚马逊森林大火可以通过在大气，生物圈和土壤之间重新分布大量有机碳来显着影响全球碳循环。 火灾还影响森林健康，生物量丰度和生物多样性。 该研究项目将通过使用在高海拔安第斯冰场上保存的分子有机碳签名来提供过去的森林火灾活动及其与气候变异性和人类活动的联系。 在过去的1000年中，将使用Quelccaya（Peru）Ice Core产生一个全新世生物量燃烧记录，其中包括中世纪的温暖时期和少量冰河时代，该冰核心非常适合接收来自亚马逊盆地和安妮斯的有机碳输入。 研究人员将使用新开发的分析技术来识别和量化少量冰中的众多痕量水平有机化合物，提供高分辨率的多分子记录，这些记录将描述发生火灾的发生以及燃烧的材料的类型以及新鲜植被的直接排放。 该项目将通过分析沿着植被衍生的有机碳的分析，并沿着安第斯山脉划分，这将限制燃烧过程中产生的气溶胶的沉积命运，从而提供有关高空碳循环动力学的信息。 通过表征与冰核矿物粉尘和黑碳颗粒相关的较高植物来源的有机碳，通过不完全燃烧来实现的有机碳固换，并通过放射性碳分析确定其持久性。 先前使用这种方法开发的20世纪火灾记录中观察到的可变性是明显的，并且准周期性与Quelccaya冰核氧同位素和尘埃记录不同，这表明ICE Core Organic Geochemical数据编码了独特的气候和人类源源不断的信号。 By extending these records back to roughly 1,000 AD, this project will provide valuable information about tropical South American forest health across major climate shifts and societal developments, providing a basis for determining the role of this important resource and organic carbon pool in future climate change.This project will provide valuable new information and insights regarding biomass burning variability, tropical vegetation fire impacts on the carbon cycle, and the relationships between fire occurrence, climate, and human activity over过去1000年，在此期间，亚马逊人口扩大并随后下降，全球气候发生了很大变化，并且发生了工业化。 该项目产生的生物质燃烧信息将有助于推断亚马逊森林健康的变化，亚马逊森林的健康是重要的自然和经济资源，这些资源可能会导致自然和与人类相关的过程变化。 亚马逊盆地植被代表着巨大的水槽或大气二氧化碳的来源。 了解亚马逊盆地植被的过去变化如何与全球气候变化相关，这对于确定热带森林在未来气候变化中的作用很重要。